At TokBox we can almost feel the excitement that developers are feeling for this year’s Google I/O conference, afterall our office is just a few blocks away from the Moscone Center. This afternoon we got to see Google tell developers about their Hangouts Platform and we were pretty excited to see what they had to offer.

It’s no secret that OpenTok and Hangouts share a lot of the same functionality, but we thought it would be really helpful for developers in our community if we pointed out some place where they differ. Afterall, for developers it should always be about using the best tool for the job.

OpenTok API Wins

Applications can be completely hosted at your own domain

Support for Mobile (iOS out now, Android TBD)

Moderator/Administrator models for control

Individual user Publish and Subscribe granularity

Sessions last as long as you want

You don’t have to get all your users to create an account on a 3rd party social network.

Very close control over UI, user flows, and all parts of the interaction.

Google+ Hangouts Platform Wins

Facial Recognition and Overlay API’s

Automatic promotion through social streams on Google+

Realtime data channels with a little more sugar

We’re really proud of OpenTok and all the developers that make interesting applications with us everyday. It’s great to hear that the vision of highly engaging and immersive applications using realtime video is shared by our friends at Google. It’s even more exciting to see so many developers helping us push the envelope by asking for more features and we look forward to making a more fun, human, and rich web with you all. So if there’s something you really like, or more importantly if there’s something you really want, come talk to us. We would love to help you develop your next masterpiece of an App.

PS. Song and I totally caught that insane Google Glass and Hangout stunt from the roof of the TokBox office in SoMa. So sick!